Over the past decades, microfluidic devices have been developed rapidly with the intention of shrinking bench top biological instruments into chips that can produce results faster while consuming fewer amounts of reagents and generating less wastes and hazardous materials. The so-called lab-on-a-chip devices provide advantages that include low cost, high portability, and easy operation. Direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC) power are widely used in these lab-on-a-chip devices to control the behavior and properties of bioparticles (e.g. cells, bacteria, virus, proteins, DNAs, etc.) in the microfluidic channels. For example, AC and/or DC power can provide localized heating, fluid mixing, and bio-particle handling such as cell sorting, trapping and positioning, cell stretching and lysing. The interactions between the electrical signals and cells and biomolecules also enable unique functions for diagnosis and cellular engineering, including cell impedance measurements (e.g. Coulter counter), electroporation, control of ion channels and membrane potential, neural excitation and detection, and the like. To facilitate the operation of microfluidic devices for different applications, electrical signals of specific amplitudes, waveforms and frequencies are needed to produce the desired effects.